1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to electrical metering, and more specifically to an electrical system ergonomically configured to facilitate installation of and provide reliable reading of electrical parameters of a plurality of loads.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, various electrical meters are used for high accuracy measurement over a wide frequency bandwidth. Additionally, having a plurality of power consuming loads often requires precise measurements associated with each of these loads. For example, it may be desirable to measure voltage, current, watts, vars, frequency, power, watt-hours, var/hours, demand, harmonics, etc., for each load.
Accordingly, in the conventional art, installation of a system including at least one power meter and multiple loads is typically realized by wiring and connecting each of these loads to the power meter. However, quite often, leads, wires or cables extending between the power meter and multiple loads are tangled or twisted. To discern which pair of wires belongs to the same load is a daunting task even for a seasoned professional. As a result, it is not uncommon to connect voltage and current wires belonging to different loads to the same single terminal pair. In this case, the any reading associated with a load is skewed and the information thus received can lead to serious problems.
Because these electrical meters are often installed in critical applications, shutting a system down to correct for wiring mistakes is often impossible. As a result, the meter ends up reading incorrect data for an extended period of time, e.g., until an entire plant shutdown.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an installation system that clearly indicates the desired pair of wires belonging to the same load so as to avoid accidental coupling of the voltage and current wires belonging to different loads to the same terminal pair.